DAILY DRAMA

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 9, 12 January 1932, Page 15

DAILY DRAMA

AT AN AIRPORT

HOW THE SHIPS JOURNEY

THE RADIO'S AID

It is about 4 o'clock in the morning at Newark Airport. There is a cold wind cutting across the field, blowing up little eddies of dust that pelt the windows of hangars and the office where a lone dispatcher sits. The darkness is the impenetrable blanket that covers the earth just before dawn. And somewhere to the west, driving through the dark muck, is a 'plane seeking this dreary field, writes Russell Owen in the "Now York Times." The dispatcher looks at his clock and fiddles with a switch on the desk before him. He turns on a loudspeaker. "Ho'll be on in a minute now," he says, glancing again at the clock. There is a drone in the loud-speaker and then a quick, far-off voice. "4163, 4163," it calls. "0.X., 4163, Newark," says the dispatcher. "4163, 4163, ten thousand feet, good visibility, north-west wind, position 7-A, position 7-A.. 0.X." The message is repeated by tho dispatcher, and then, as he snaps off the loud-speaker, ho turns and puts a pin labelled 4163 into a map ruled in squares to correspond with the figures given him by the pilot. "He'scoming fast "with the wind, J> he says. "And I bet he's cold." Twice more the reports come in, the last call being only a few miles away; then the dispatcher snaps off his instrument and lights his pipe. We go out into darkness, turning up our coat collars against the wind. Far away is a pulsing hum, the. song of a 'plane riding the west wind. Two lights appear, tiny points that shoot beams through the night as if some strange creature is darting its sight forward, feeling for. a landing.. ' . LIGHTS ON. There- is -S roar overhead and the - 'plane■-sweeps across as the floodlights and boundary lights are turned on, making a-path of silver. Around in a large circle it flic.l and then dips into the light, sliding down with a shrill whistling of wind in the wires. It touches lightly and then with another burst of sound rolls up to the hangar door. Men run forward as it stops, unfasten the mail compartment, and throw out bags. A tall figure rises from the cockpit and, with the clumsiness of one who has been cramped by cold and tho burden of a parachute as a seat pack, steps down and with chilled fingers unbuckles the straps. The pilot looks up with surprise at friends who have come out so early to see him land. "What's the matter with you— crazy?" he says. "Didn't you ever see an aeroplane before?" The attitude of anyone who has the slightest curiosity about the night mail is incomprehensible to him. Ho lias flown it for years. Prom his cockpit he takes a magazine. He has been reading an adventure story as he flitted through the night at 10,000 feet on tho heels of a gale! The floodlights are turned off again and the field is again left to darkness and to wind. Tho next scene in this daily drama of the airport is announced by the sputter of a" motor behind one of the hangars. It is a 'plane warming up to take newspapers to Washington. Its cabiu loaded, it rolls out ou the field; the lights go on and it takes off; after gaining altitude it turns south and is quickly lost to sight. Then as the sky is turning grey iv the east— the first sign of dawn—a mail 'plane hops off for Boston. While workers are rolling over in bed and cursing alarm clocks, a 'plane filled with mail starts for Montreal. Its pilot had a bad time one day last winter. He had put on skis at Albany f or^a, landing in the snow at Montreal, and-one of them became loose aud stuck out so that it dragged the 'plane into a skidding circle. OBSTINATE. Tho pilot could not shake it off; the more'he opened his motor the faster he went around. When he slowed down and- stopped skidding he; lost altitude. Finally, he picked out the best place he could find near a road and "sat down," crashing the 'plane badly. But his mailbags, piled behind him, flew forward and so completely surrounded him that he was not even scratched. The"- first—transport for Washington goes out at 7.35 o 'clock, and from then on until late at night tho big field becomes the counterpart, .of . a .railroad station. There are 108 scheduled 'planes a day in and out of Newark, and 400 passengers on an average, are carried. . They, go to Chicago and on to-the Pacific Coast, to Atlanta and far down into tho Southwest; to Boston, .Montreal, Washington, Pittsburgh—and every line has some intermediate stops. •■■ .- The machines slide in deliberately at the end of their journeys, roll up to the landing gates and unload their passengers. Likewise they depart, with no more of an atmosphere of adventure than there is about the Grand Central Station-. Passengers may. .. sometimes enter a 'plane with a nervous smilo of reassurance to themselves, but they land looking.bored. _In the waiting rooms of the various lines—for as yet there is not a central station, although one is planned—men and women and sometimes children wait for the 'planes. They have had their tickets validated at the counter, their baggago has been weighed, and their seats have been assigned. They are permitted thirty pounds of baggage without an extra charge, but often they get on with their arms loaded with bundles, which, to the annoyance of the company, find their way into suitcases. They arrive by bus or car only a short time before their 'planes depart, and the 'planes themselves do not come up to the point of embarkation until five minutes before they are to take off. The pilot saunters through the room, and the passengers look curiously at the man to whom they are to entrust their lives for tho next few hours. These young men in trim uniforms, with clean, brown faces, are smilingly nonchalant. The mere- sight of them is insurance against nervousness. WEATHER REPORTS. The pilot goes to the despatchor's room, where he gets a sheet of paper giving him reports gathered by tin: United States Weather Bureau all along his route. A eomploto report of this kind can be obtained on ten minutes' notice. The 'plane has been taxied to the passenger entrance in front of the waiting room, and if it is a large one it has been towed there tail first by a tractor, so that its powerful engines will not blow dirt all over the place. (For the airport is still a little dusty, although cement runway;! are being put in as fast as the city can afford them. In the meantime passengers and their friends are protected by • minimum use of the motors.) The waiting 'plane is a big one, bound for Chicago, and when it is filled and the motors are .started, it is Ignominously towed backward on to the field. An attendant runs out with two iags, one white and one red, and holds the red one in tho air until he is sure that the 'piano far out across tho field

is in no danger from other craft. If the sky is clear he gives the signal with the white flag, and in a minute the ■big ship is in tho air and turning with stately, wide-winged precision toward the west. Aeroplanes come and go with such regularity that one almost tires of watching them, although that is not quite possible around an airport. The field manager, an ex-army pilot who fought in tho war, Lieutenant Eichard Aldworth, turns every time he hoars a 'plane coming in. "I suppose.l have seen 100,000 takeoffs and landings," he says, "but I always have to watch them. "We can hear that 'plane which just left for Boston in a little while; let's go up to the despatcher's room," he adds as a silver tri-motored 'plane leaves the field and heads over Now York. INFORMATION. There is no more interesting place at an airport than the despatchor's room. Along one wall are sheets of differentcoloured paper, hanging from clips. On them are pasted weather reports from the ports along tho routes, so that the pilots can glance over them and not only get a perfect picture of weather conditions, but also of the condition of the various fields. Take one on the Atlanta route. The first report on the ribbon that has clicked like ticker tape out of an automatic machine roads: "NX SCD CLDS UNL 15 WNW 24 61 GUSTY TEMPORARY KEPAIIJS E SIDE OF FIELD." Which means: "Newark, scattered clouds, unlimited ceiling, visibility fifteen miles, west-north-west wind, twenty-four miles an hour, temperature 61," etc. ' . . And the last entry of this series reads: "AG CLR SMOKY UNL 5 NW. 14 71," or "Atlanta, clear but smoky, unlimited ceiling, visibility five miles, north-west wind, fourteen miles au hour, temperature 71." The paper sheets arc coloured according to the route—red, yellow, white north, south, east. At one side is a map on which tho routes are traced in pins coloured to match the paper, so that at a glance may be seen the source of every report, and its possible effect on flying calculated. 'Planes may be re-routed or grounded by orders from headquarters.